New Zealand backroads - Kihikihi to Lake Taupo

X marks the spot on a pirate's map. Luckily Google maps have both X's and Y's, as it makes finding and navigating New Zealand's last remaining back-road treasures a lot easier. Here's one of my favourites to try the next time you have to get South from Auckland and want to avoid traffic, plus see some of the kiwi heartland.


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We traveled this route a few days into 2010, keen to avoid State Highway 1 on the well-worn track from Hamilton to Taupo. The road condition is brilliant, through the rolling hill country of the South Waikato region. State Highway 1 reported delays in some small towns of up to half an hour. Avoid!

Lots of personal memories for me motoring this way - starting with an early Split Enz concert at the Te Awamutu race-course, playing to a few hundred people in the sun on a Saturday afternoon.

A few kilometres South-east of Kihikihi keep an eye out for the ghost filled Orakau battle site, the scene of one of the last desperate battles in NZ's war for land and resources in the 1860s. From memory the road runs right through the middle of it. Hmmm.


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The drive also kindles memories of visiting farming family friends in the Owairaka Valley, hiking in the Pureora Forest, and learning of the destruction of lowland podocarp forests while on a University environmental geography camp to Barryville. Stopping to stand on top of the Waipapa hydro dam listening to the hum of the turbines, and laughing over what tourists (and now our 8 year old) think of a name like Whakamaru pronounced with an F.

But you don't need to have grown up in this area to enjoy the drive. The road is beautifully engineered, you'll need your wits about you if you're pushing on as the lanes are narrow. There's a seriously winding bit going down to river level at Waipapa and climbing out the other side. Brilliant on a motorcycle, likely to be spew inducing on a weak stomach in the back seat I'm afraid.

Watch out for cyclists - they're smart to take this route to Taupo if they can hack the climbs. Te Awamutu has bred some world class cyclists trained on this countryside. There's a store at Wharepapa South for a break.

The turnoff at Owairaka Valley Road 10km out from Kihikihi is going to give your GPS-brained TomTom sat nav device the heebies and you should steadfastly ignore its demand you stick to the main road, and turn right. It'll forgive your defiance when you rejoin the highway further along.

And of course, if you have the time, take a few side roads along the way.

The King Boys, a short film by the Clark Brothers, 2006

I have a favourite song by a collective of Wellington musicians who call themselves 'Fly My Pretties' that goes:

"Wellington's just a small town but it packs a lot of punch,

There's talent oozing from the walls and they eat ideas for lunch."

Some of that talent makes films. And I'm actually in one of them. A whole 11 seconds of fame.

I guess that last factoid makes me biased, but Fraser and Chris Clark are people I greatly admire for their film-making and story-telling talents.

Waiting interminably for a green light and a critical co-finance deal from the NZ Film Commission, they were challenged to make a short film that would show off the essence of their feature film idea, and test their resolve as film-makers by giving them 1/5 of the money actually needed to make a 15 minute short film.

They gathered favours, friends and emerging kiwi talent, tapped the Wellington film community for studios, costumes, make-up, cameras, set constructors and actors; as well as the artistic and design community for poster designs, music, printers, photography, web designers, and the result is something else.

Geoff Clark (the boys' Dad) took the role as referee, Fraser's father-in-law was a ringside judge. Costumes came from the recently completed King Kong courtesy of Peter Jackson. A couple of dozen enthusiastic extras combined with Adam Clark's camera wizardy made up a whole stadium full of wrestling fans.

It featured on the opening night of the Wellington Film Festival in 2006, as a prequel to Tommy Lee Jones' tour de force The 3 Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Sadly, I missed my own debut on one of the biggest screens in the Southern Hemisphere owing to a work commitment in Auckland that evening that could not be escaped.

It went on to do a round of pretty good film festivals, was bought by Rialto channel and won an Air NZ screen award. Only recently Fraser made a high resolution edition of the film available on YouTube in 2 parts:





My role was to play the gelatinous man-mountain of a wrestler who the hero, returning from war and recovering from shell-shock finds himself facing for the 1947 NZ Wrestling crown. An actual bona fide actor had stepped up for the role, but was called away to paying work just a filming was scheduled.

Needless to say it was great fun, despite hanging around a cold warehouse shooting the finale for a weekend in nothing more than black-painted basketball boots and shorts that were pulled up so high I looked like an alien with no belly button. Mike Clare's great still photography from the shoot captured me with a clarity that made me question the sensibility of that extra slice of R+R pizza at lunch on Fridays.

Wrestling was a huge deal in NZ in the pre and post-war periods. Wellington had weekly bouts in the town hall, several gyms where people trained, and the great Lofty Blomfield reached a World Championship final bout where his famous Octopus Clamp earned him a draw.

Drawing on this as background, The King Boys paints a rich psychological, sporting and family landscape in the post-war period, with the acting talents of Rangi Ngamoki, Karlos Drinkwater and Grant Tilly at the fore.

The boys have now put the feature on the back-burner and have another project cooking with strong interest in all the right places. Watch out for it. Hope they're writing a part for a 6'3 slightly graying wrestler in there somewhere - I'm owed another 4 seconds of fame.

Fraser, Chris and Adam (no relation) Clark on set during filming.

Chris and Rangi on set

Holden v Ford - Holden wins yet another major event.

Not only did we win, but we pissed all over Ford on this one.

I should declare up front (like you hadn't already guessed), probably owing to the second car I can recall my family owning being a Holden stationwagon around 1970, I am clearly of the General Motors tribe. I am hardwired to Holden.

The next family car was (not surprisingly) another Holden wagon reg GL6205 - burned into my male homo trivia subconcious for god knows what reason, and apart from a brief sojourn with the dark side when my brother-in-law Alan sold me his Fairmont wagon in the early 1990s, I've been right behind the lion with his paw on the wheel.

That Fairmont did sterling duty as the team car for the Colonial Classic in 1995 - dressed up in Peanut Slab colours, it packed numerous bikes on roof and rack, and half the team in comfort. It was a great colour, had electric everything but sadly, was a Ford. Undoubtedly the choice of car was far more advisable than the choice of workboots with white socks and pants pulled a long way up.

Thirty years on from the Kingswood and Belmont, the current family car is a 2001 Commodore wagon, dusty gold coloured 'Shitbox' model with alloy wheels and only 161,563km on the clock. Living in Melbourne, it's the logical choice for a low-cost vehicle. They make them here. They make the spare parts here. There are a zillion of them on the roads - they are the trabbie of Victoria. Plus the windows wind by hand, a serious novelty for today's generation of children. I can put my bike in the back and double the Commmdore's value!

Truth is, I'm not well acquainted with any of the recent offerings of GM or Ford, nor am I likely to become in the near future - I love the 'BMW 3 series that's been amateurishly stretched in Powerpoint' looks of the VE, but I've never driven one. As I've aged, I find a frightening attraction to the old-man Holdens (Calais - who would name a car after that shit-hole? Hang on, the same guys named one after a hillside suburb in the Hutt Valley...) rather than a horny SS-V8, Maloo or the Monaros, but I'm accepting of aging as natural part of life.

There's probably no question the Ford is better engineered either. They got a handsome tax break from the Victorian government to keep 5 people employed in Geelong designing it, but the nicest thing I can say is that I've mistaken a couple of new Falcons for old Commodores when viewed from a certain 3/4 angle. Can't see the difference when they dress them up for V8 racing, that's for sure.

Anyway, courtesy of the RACV magazine this month, I am thrilled to see Holden once again trounce Ford. With GM billions in debt, only 45 days from Chapter 11, cutting Saab loose last month, and no doubt a few Melbourne accountants staying up at night worrying about whether Holden can survive on its own 4 feet, this is comforting news indeed.

What's more, the discerning car thief also prefers Holden Commodore.

Hold on a minute - that recovery rate seems enormous. It makes me wonder if these so-called car thieves were never actually intending to nick a vehicle - maybe when they went down to Melbourne's new Flexicar pickup spot and discovered a Honda bloody Jazz, they did the natural thing and just took the car next door? Which statistically speaking in this town, was quite likely to be a 1999 - 2004 Commodore.

Doesn't this guy look like he'd prefer a Commodore wagon to you?

Thoughts of a Kiwi in Minneapolis - on Home

Noah is a constant joy for us, and growing up so fast.

Now insisting on walking just about everywhere, he's been upset in his sleeping patterns by being over-tired and cranky. We had 3 memorable nights when he slept well. Our apartment is suddenly feeling a little small, although a move to the suburbs is occasionally discussed, the barrier of having to own a second car and commute is off-putting.

Our visas expire in March 2003 (that seemed forever away!), so credit on a car is probably impossible anyway. Renewals have been shortened to another 2 year stint and then 'on yer bike'.

Our house is thoroughly child-proofed, debunking another fine theory that only people who haven't had children can possibly hold - that he would learn what to touch and what not to touch!

We did have some fun buying the wood for the fence we built - we took a measuring tape to Home Depot and discovered by a 4x2 isn't really 4 inches by 2. Its far more likely to be 3 by 1.5, or 3.5 by 1.S (there is no standard) as the 'branded' measurement is BEFORE the timber is dressed. Now maybe I should have known that from life in NZ, but it must make for some challenges on the building site.

We now have 370 channels available on our television, and of course watch about 5, but hey, when in Rome ...

I'm looking forward to the Tour de France, when America realizes it has the world's best road cyclist for 28 days. If you get the chance to watch, I urge you to cheer on kiwi rider Chris Jenner in the Credit Agricole team, riding his second Tour. Chris rode in the NZ tour a few years ago that I managed a team within - my claim to fame is having cleaned his bike. I'll never wash again.

We've managed to get out on our mountain bikes this summer quite a bit - it is only just entering the 100 degree high-humidity period which can be a bit challenging. Lesley got a new dual suspension racer which has improved the experience immensely. Noah comes along and gets shared around while the others do a lap of the trails. We have purchased him a seat that rests on the cross-bar, our last attempt to make him mobile after rejection of a trailer and sitting behind the action.

Noah gets 2 swims per day which he loves (good practice for life back in places where the sea is less than 3000 miles away), and the kiwi apples are now in the supermarkets which he is very keen on as well. I swear NZ exports its best apples, I don't recall anything this good back home, let alone a type called 'Southern Rose'.

Lesley introduced our friends and their children to the sins of Pavlova at Noah's birthday party. It was a sensation. The Australians present claimed it as their own national dish of course. The guests also went wild over the magnificent beef that she'd prepared - it was actually lamb, but given that a good proportion of those present had never eaten lamb in their lives they were forgiven.

As Lesley and I recently blobbed in front of the movie Fargo (set here in MN) we recalled the first time we had seen it, in the early 1990s at the Wellington Film Festival. The magnificent opening scene where Jerry Lundegard, Executive VP of Car Sales, tows a stolen brown Sierra across the whited-out landscape of Minnesota seemed so otherworldly at the time.

The characters in Fargo seemed so eccentric and tragic, yet were so convincingly portrayed that we did not know what to make of such a place - fact (as the Coen brothers cheekily make it out to be in the preamble) or fiction? As it turns out the very parking lot where Steve Buscemi receives the unfortunate dental work courtesy of Jerry's father-in-law is just across from my office, which was brand new at the time of filming. It's turned out real alright.

Whilst watching, Lesley remarked how perhaps our transition from place to place in the world was somehow dictated by such movie-watching moments, and wondered aloud if we had already watched our next life but were not aware of it yet?

Here's hoping. The Shire looked pretty heavenly to me.